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Sunday, February 8, 2009

Design a website that gets visitors to take action. See if visitors are actually reaching the desired goal. Today, website ROI is measured by conversions - how frequently visitors reach your goals. No marketing campaign is complete without measuring the effects of online marketing.

A number of small businesses spend a considerable time and effort in building websites and a lot of spend goes in marketing the site but almost no time or effort is spent in measuring the marketing campaign performance. Monitoring and studying your website traffic lets you know what campaigns are working and helps you understand where the efforts need to be eased and where they need to be concentrated.

A good web-monitoring tool will give a fair idea of the existing gaps between the marketing campaign and results. You will get a good understanding of where your traffic is coming from and might be surprised to see some filtering from unlikely sources.

If you have launched a new service – a newsletter, signup or are offering a free product – track sources and the path traveled to see if these are working or not. If users are leaving the goal path mid way then make changes to tune the path for better conversions.

Some of the areas that you can track on most web analytics are:

Tracking pages

Check the pages that are most frequented by users and those that are not. If visitors are not surfing to the page you want them to see, make better links. Look at the entry and exit pages. See the pages that get hit the most? Which ones draw the least web traffic? Which pages are bookmarked, as bookmarked pages tend to draw traffic directly?

Entry pages are those from where the visitor entered your site. This can be from a search engine, an affiliate, or a link from a post or forum or a referring site. If a visitor came in from a search query and left immediately, it is obvious they didn’t find what they were looking for. If this happens examine the keywords that bring in the search. Do they tally with your offering?

If your visitors consistently exit just before clicking on the ‘Buy’ button, you may have a pricing problem. Visit your competition and have a look. Try to add fresh offers and discounts. Once again reassess your key words.

Track the time spent on a page and the site. More time spent means information offered is relevant and of interest.

Top landing pages

This report will show you how many visitors reach your landing page and the path taken from there. It is a good measure of assessing how many visitors is the site loosing from each landing page. Visitors leaving the site after viewing just a single page increase the "bounce rate" for the entrance page. Your attempt should be to reduce the number of "bounces" on a page where the visitors are landing. Too many bounces" may mean that the page needs tweaking. If a large number of visitors are leaving the site instantly (higher bounce rate) it would mean a lower conversion rate. If you have made changes, study the trend over a period of time to know if the changes you are making are for the better.

Traffic Sources

Check the web stats for traffic coming form Search Engines, the number of Searches, total Searches, Keywords and phrases. Examining the total Searches gives you an idea on how well your marketing efforts are paying off. Higher searches translate to higher hits - check to see that there is no downward shift on the total searches. If this happens re-look your keywords.

Check other sources that are sending traffic to your site - referrals. Referrals are links form other websites to your site. These could include affiliates, ads etc.

Visitor Tracking

This would be the most important area of stats monitoring. Identifying unique visitors, distinguishing unique and returning visitors helps you determine how effective you are in getting new visitors, and how well you retain them. If the site shows an increase in the number of pages viewed per visitor it could mean that potential customers to the site are finding more relevant content – hence tend to “stick” longer on the site. If page views start to increase then you are on track and this should result in an increase in sales. A fall in the duration of time spent on your site is early indicator of falling interest.

Site Overlay

Site overlay indicates the areas on the entrance page that are being clicked on. You can follow the click path to see where the visitors are clicking to reach the goal. Check for the conversion percentage: how frequently visitors who click there convert to each of your goals.

Define Goals

All goals are not sales. A goal is would be a desired action performed by the visitor when browsing through the site. These would be those desired actions taken by visitors - that add to the success of your business. A signup, filling a contact form or any other connecting point that takes the visitor to the final action can also be defined as a goal. Different goals can be assigned to study different metrics.

Funnels

Funnels defined within goals help identify the areas where visitors are abandoning the path. This let’s you track where you are losing visitors on the path to conversion. You can chalk out the path that you expect the visitors to take and track where on the path are you losing the visitors. Further for exits you can also trace the path of funnel exits as well as funnel entries. This helps you identify the key areas that need tweaking - too much abandonment from the path may mean re-looking at the path defined for users - this may be due to too many clicks to reach the end, unclear instructions, too many options etc.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the process of measuring your performance against the better performing sites within your industry. Benchmarking within your industry is essential to the success of your business. Boosts and dips in traffic within specified days, time etc in comparison to other sites in the industry would give you a meaningful insight into your website stats. However benchmarking only works if you are willing to share data.

Google analytics allows you to be able to compare your site's Visits, Page views, Pages per Visit, Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site, and New Visits data against benchmark data from categories of other participating websites. You can use this data to identify additional opportunities to improve your site's metrics.

There are a number of options for website statistics measurement. Some of the free popular webs tracking tools are:

www.onestatfree.com: with the OneStat Free tracker you can easily check the number of visitors and page views, visitor profile, popular pages on the site, traffic sources, browser stats, daily stats, site comparison etc.

Wouldn't you like to know how many visitors your competitors or your favourite blog gets ? Now it's possible to find it out, free and easy...

WebInfoStats.com is a unique visitor traffic estimator which displays any website’s unique visitor numbers. Against Alexa's top and percentage numbers, this is a very useful tool because Alexa is not showing directly how many visitors a website gets. Alexa shows you if a site is popular and rank in the top 100.000. But with this new site you can see an estimation of the unique visitor numbers a site gets. The site says, you should not take it as the exact visitor numbers, but they are pretty close. I tested all of my domains and 'yes, they are pretty close'.

I hear you asking 'How could they know ?'It's a good question. The answer is they don't, they only guess. They collect data from Alexa, Googleand Yahoo like backlinks, Alexa ranking, indexed pages, combine and process them for an estimation on each site.

When you use WebInfoStats, it is important for you to remember that the number of unique visitors is different from visits, pageviews and hits. A 'unique visitor' is statistical metric where each visitor who generates traffic to a website is counted only once in a special time frame; generally on daily base.

This is an online solution where you enter only the url to get the stats of the site you entered. They also show some additional information about the website, like description, Google Pagerank and Alexa Rank. You can also navigate through the new sites added to their database.

When you first start blogging it feels fun and when you start getting traffic blogging feels really fun. A lot of people go into blogging expecting to be the next Wil Wheaton or Dooce or Perez Hilton. These same people often scrap their blogs for other projects within a month or two. Why is that? Technorati says that there are millions of blogs in the system and that thousands of new blogs are created every day. Why are so many of these blogs abandoned?

Patience is a Virtue!

For some reason people think that a blog will see overnight success. Guess what—it simply is not true! It takes quite a lot of time to build up a blog's following and gain some notoriety within the blogosphere. Even Heather Armstrong (the author of the popular Dooce blog) and Jason Kottke started out small. No blogger has ever been popular immediately. They have the fame they have now because they stuck with blogging and built an audience from scratch. It can take months or even years to build up an audience and when the attention isn't immediate, most bloggers will give up.

Thinking too Small

Today the single most popular piece of advice given to new bloggers is to "choose a niche." While it is certainly helpful for some bloggers to center their sites around a certain idea or notion, these same bloggers do not often take the time to figure out which niche best lends itself to blogging. The truth is that any niche can be blogged about as long as the blogger thinks broadly enough. Unfortunately most novice bloggers pigeonhole themselves from the beginning. Instead of focusing simply on marine biology, the blogger might focus solely on a single type of fish or location. Eventually it becomes difficult to think of blog posts and the blog naturally runs out of steam.

Are you easily bored?

When choosing a niche or a blogging subject, it is a good idea to choose something that you are passionate about. Most bloggers try to choose subjects (or niches) that are already popular or that could end up earning them money. The problem with this is that these markets are already oversaturated so the competition is worse. The other problem is that the blogger might not enjoy his/her subject matter and get bored with it quickly. Choose a subject that you can (or already do) talk about every day without tiring of it. Most bloggers choose based on numbers, not emotions.

All of these things can lead to the abandoning of a blog. The simple truth is that building a popular blog takes time focus and quite a lot of energy and effort. There is no way to simply coast into a very popular blog and the blogging fame that comes with it. Take your time and build slowly. You'll be better off in the long run!

Blogging is really a simple writing work to earn money. There are millions of blogger are writing their own blog and earn money. But earn a better money blogger should take a high and valuable content on their blogger. The blog must linked with high and very important and related website. It increase the value of blog.Blogger must take add from their personal absence account. It's a very easy way to earn money when you are in sleep at night. Some add gives you 100$ when anyone click your adds.So don't be happy to see 100$ per click. Even some add give u only 0.02$ per click. Don't be sorrow to think it. Because think that if 100 people are see or click your adds you can get (0.02$*100)=2$ per day. So monthly income60$. So think now yearly income. So don't neglect it.actually thousands of blogger are get money thus this process, but many of them can't tell this because they are now so much rich that they think its a normal way to earn money.but in a beginner position any one can do this. i think its a better process to earn money.

If you are looking for a really simple way to add new content to your website daily, without having to write a new article everyday ... you need a blog! Maybe you already have a blog but have not posted to it in a long while because of all the time it takes to write a post for each of your blogs. Updating a blog daily is the best way to organically grow your websites in the eyes of the search engines.

If you can't find a way to focus your efforts, you will not make money online. Plain and simple; believe me, if you've been seeking to making money online.

When I first got into the "make money online" field, I couldn't get focused. I was listening to this guy, that guy, another guy, every guy and got information overload and didn't take action.

I wasn't able to pick a project and stay focused and finish it. I would read an e-book or take some information from someone and try to put that information in use to make money for myself online.

Some of them had great information and I could make money from the information when I started that project. The problem was that I would never finish a project. I was always searching for something better. I was always looking for the next big thing. I was looking for something that didn't exist. I was looking for something that didn't require hardly any work and was going to make me a millionaire overnight.

There is no product that is going to do this for you!

I had the information in my hands to make a handsome living online. I just wasn't using it. I wasn't staying focused on a project long enough to see any returns.

I was lied to, like most people who get into the making money online field. We are told by people who want to sell their products to us, that we will make a million dollars overnight and don't have to do much work. Guess what, you won't make that kind of money overnight and it does take some work.

What you should do is pick out some projects and finish them.

Once you start finishing your projects, whatever they may be, creating a product, building a website, writing sales copy, writing articles, etc., the money will start coming in.

I always say that the toughest dollar to make online is the first one. There are so many people that don't make any money online and give up and go back to their day job.

The first dollar was definitely the toughest for me to make. I think it gets easier because once you have made some money online, you have broken down that first very important barrier down, it gets a lot easier.

You realize that you really can make money online and your confidence soars! You can just keep on doing what you were doing to make more money. Work harder and expand your business. Repeat what you're doing to make money and just keep expanding on that process and keep working on ways to improve your business.

Focus and hard work is going to get you a long way in life.

Using focus and hard work to make money online are the two major keys to success and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. As you focus a "funnel" will be created to drive traffic, conversion of that traffic and ultimately sales. Focus and hard work are equivalent terms in reaching your objective. The one promise I can make, because I've experienced it, is if you will focus your efforts with your hard work you will achieve your desires!

Blogging can be an incredibly rewarding activity. Some people start a blog to promote a business. Other people start a blog because they simply like the idea of having their own website and a blog is the easiest kind of website to start. Others blog because they have an agenda that they want to promote. Still others start blogs because they want to educate people about certain issues. Whatever your reason for blogging, there is one thing that all bloggers can agree on: finding content can be a big pain in the…you-know-where.

When you start blogging thinking of blog post topics will be easy. This is largely due to your level of enthusiasm over your new site. Most bloggers will write a few posts a day when they start out. As time goes on, however, finding things to blog about becomes more difficult. It is not unlike looking across the table at your husband and realizing that the funny story you were about to tell him is the same funny story you've told him fifty times and is probably bored with it.

So what do you do?

The first place we go when we need to find blogging content is the news. We look at headlines in our local area first to see if anything piques our interest. Sometimes an article or a topic will jump out at us and give us enough ideas that we'll have a few days worth of content for our blogs. Sometimes it is just a passing fancy that we mention only once. If no local news seems fitting for our blog (this will depend largely on your blog's niche), then we move on to national news and then world news.

If we don't find any current events to write about, the next place we look when we need help with blogging is our own entertainment cache. What have we been playing with lately? What books are we reading? Did we just see a movie that we can write about? Remember, blogging is about sharing opinions. Your readers want to know what you think about something even if it is just about a television show that was on last night.

If we still can't think of any blogging material, we call our friends. Sometimes having a conversation with a friend will remind us of a topic we wanted to cover. Sometimes we'll have such a great conversation that the conversation itself will become the topic of our blog post. Sometimes our friends will alert us to something that we think would work well for content.

Sometimes, in lieu of blogging original words, we'll start blogging original visuals. Blogs are a great place to display photos from your recent vacation (you've probably been meaning to post them anyway) or a quick sketch you did. If you draw cartoons, your blog is a great method of distributing those cartoons to the public!

Finally, if all else fails you can always write a blog post about having nothing to blog about. It probably isn't a good idea to do this too often, though!

For more information on blogging, visit http://www.microbloggingsites.com and http://www.microbloggingtool.com.

The word is a loose contraction of the term, "Web Log." A blog is--at a minimum--"a journal that is available on the web.The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger," according to the Dictionary.

What is Blogging?

Blogging offers the opportunity for people to tell the world what's on their minds, to share their passions, or to simply inform them of current events--no matter how uniquely focused. Or…to tell them what's going on in their business. A blog is a hybrid e- zine/newsletter that keeps you and your contacts in touch with each other.

Benefits1.) Responsibility/Commitment - Daily PostsRegular updates require children to be disciplined and responsible.

2.) Communication - Increased Communication with Friends and RelativesBlogging or journaling gives children the opportunity to connect with relatives who might live some distance away, communicating important timely issues.

3.) Technology - Exposure to Internet TechnologiesChildren are growing into technology-laden world. Exposure to innovative Internet technology will help them with communication skills and résumé-building.

4.) TypingGetting children acquainted with keyboards at a young age will help them become familiar with their layout and function, quickly making them proficient typists.

What would you think if I told you that you could develop a base of prospects that that would look forward to hearing from you? You can do this, and more, by starting a blog for the help www.feed-reader-links.com. Since the landmark CANN-SPAM legislation, I think the spam situation has gotten worse instead of better. I continue to get more new spam than I can effectively filter, and the "marketing gurus" who send me newsletters from time to time, are bemoaning the fact that as much as 46% of their outgoing e-mail is never getting to its intended recipients because of spam filters; either on desktops, or at ISPs.

Worse, in an effort to get through the filters and into your inbox, those same gurus are reduced to sending their messages using words like `s*p*a*m', or `free', or `guar*an*teed'. For me, this is a turn- off that makes their messages look unprofessional, and in my eyes, costs them credibility. And here is where a blog begins to solve those problems.

Friday, February 6, 2009

On many blogs you can see an image separating the posts. To implement this in your blog

Step-1: First you will have to create an image in an image editor or do a Google search for "free border backgrounds".

Step-2: After creating or downloading a free image first upload it to a freehost like Photobucket.com or Googlepages and copy down the link of the image.

Step-3: The next step is to define a class in the CSS part of your template to house your image.

For this login at Blogger.com and click on Layout link on Dashboard. Then click on Edit Html subtab of Template tab. Scroll down and paste the code below just above the ]]></b:skin>

tag in the Template code box.separator,

{

background-image: url(LINK OF YOUR IMAGE);

background-repeat: no-repeat;

background-position: center center;

height: 20px;

padding: 4px;

}

Replace the CAPS with the link of your image at Photobucket.

Now we have to place the code in the<body>

of the template. To do this login at Blogger.com and click on Layout link on Dashboard. Then click on Edit Html subtab of Template tab. Put a check in Expand widgets template check box at the top of the Template code box and scroll down to this code in the blog posts widget :<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'/>

Paste the code below immediately after the above line :<div class="separator"></div>

Save Template and open in a new window!Thats it friend,You havve now added image to the blog post succesfully!

Thursday, February 5, 2009

New Visitor? Like what you read? Then please subscribe to my Blog Feed or sign up for Free Email Updates. Thanks for Visiting!

The "0 comments" link at the bottom of the blog posts can hardly be called intuitive. Viewers fail to understand it's significance. That is why on this blog I have customized it to make it more viewer friendly.

If there are no comments on the post this is what appears "Be the first to leave a comment!". If only one visitor commented on the post viewers see "1 VIEWER CLICKED HERE TO COMMENT ON THIS POST. ADD YOUR COMMENT." If more than one visitor left a comment than you see "n VIEWERS CLICKED HERE TO COMMENT ON THIS POST. ADD YOUR COMMENT." where 'n' is the number of comments left.

This can be done by customizing the comments code.............

ENABLE COMMENTS

The first step is to enable comments in your Settings. There are three places where comments have to be enabled. Login at Blogger.com and click on Settings link on Dashboard. Follow all steps outlined in Tips on Blogger Comments to enable your comments.

This will make the comments show up on the Post Pages. On the Main Page comments are not shown since it would make the Main Page slower to load if there are many comments. If after enabling all comment settings they are still not seen then possibly your template code has been corrupted. To reset it first backup your widgets data and customization. Then login at Blogger.com and click Layout link on Dashboard. Click Edit Html subtab of Layouts tab. Scroll down to bottom of Template Code box and click on the "Revert Widget Templates to Default" link. This will lose any customization in widget templates which you can restore from the backup you had made first.

MODIFYING THE CODE

To modify the comments link code login at Blogger.com and click Layouts link on Dashboard. Click the Edit Html subtab of Layout tab. Click the 'Expand Widget Templates' checkbox on top right of the Template Code box. Wait for the page to refresh and scroll down to locate this code in the Blog Posts widget :

What's beauty if your image is shown near to all of your posts in blogger.Ya its amazing to see you with your blog title.Here i let you know,how to do that now?It's very simple tasks,that you follow as i gave detailed instructions below;

1. CREATE AN IMAGE:

First step is to create a image either in an image editor or in an online image generator such as cooltext.com. Save it to your hard disk and upload it to a freehost.(www.photobucket.com) Then copy down its link/URL.

2. CREATING THE IMAGE CODE

The image code from your free hoster :

<img src="LINK OF YOUR IMAGE" style="border-width:0px" />

3. EDIT THE TEMPLATE FROM LAYOUT

Login to the "Dashboard" and click on "Layout" for the blog you wish to modify. Then click the Edit Html subtab of Template tab.First backup the template. Put a check in Expand Widgets Template box at the top of the template text box.

Scroll down till you come to the Blog Posts widget code. Locate this code :

<b:includable id='post' var='post'>

<div class='post hentry'>

<a expr:name='data:post.id'/>

<b:if cond='data:post.title'>

<h3 class='post-title entry-title'>

<b:if cond='data:post.link'>

<a expr:href='data:post.link'><data:post.title/></a>

<b:else/>

<b:if cond='data:post.url'>

4.If you want it to appear after the title paste the image code after this subsequent line of code :

code is:

<data:post.title/>

Preview and save Template.Thats it yoyu have succesfully added your each posts with your own image.

After a long days of hard work,i have learn how to create templates for bloggers with xml and html.you may feel boring of having old blogger templates with two columns and with few custamizable options.

Step.1 Open notepad with empty text

step.2 copy the below codes:

step.3 Just paste it on notepad and save it with your favourite location

step.4 sign in to blogger->layout->html

step.5 back up your templates or just copy the whole xml codes by(ctrl+a) and paste it your hard disk.

step.6 Now delete the current codes and paste the one which you copied from here.

First of all know what is TRACKing. As a new blogger(webmaster),it is always interesting to know how many people are visiting your blog/site,pageviews,where they are coming from,which sites are referring,how many are coming via Search Engines(google,yahoo,etc) and what they are typing in the search engines to visit your site.These stastistics are very handy interms of improving your blog and it is for FREEsmile

If you search the google,you will find hundreds of sites which will track the visitors of your blog/site.But,some sites will provide more information about your visitors than the others.So,how to do this?Here are the best tracking sources interms of the feautures they provide.

Note:One thing is common for all the tracking sites.First you need to register,and provide the necessary information about your blog/website.Next,they will give you a html code and you have to embed it in your blog.

How to do that in blogger?1.Sign in to your blogger dashboard.2.Click on the 'layout' ,link next to your blog name.3.Click on the "Add a Page element"4.Select "html/javascript" and past the code they provide and SAVE THE CHANGES.

From then,your blog will be tracked by the trackback websites and you can check your blog stats from time to time after logging in to your registrate's website.

So,here are top trackers:-

Sitemeter.com:This one is one of the Most Popular tracking source.This is as simple as 123. Just create an account,copy the code from your account and paste it in your blog as suggested above.You have also the option to keep your blog stats PRIVATE.They will give you the stats on how many pageviews(hits) per day,unique visitors,geolocation of the visitors,how many users online,and much more...As it is simple(not much animation),you site will load as fast as it is before.Stats are updated hourly.

histats.com:Histats.com:Unlike the Sitemeter which is very simple, this site will have very cool and animated counters.animated countersanimated countersanimated countersanimated counters

Tracking is updated every 5 minutes.I personally using this site for my blogs.Like Sitemeter,this is also have the option to keep your site stats PRIVATE.They will provide Animated graphs about your site visitors and fully animative.

statcounter:Statcounter.com:Same here!As in the name,it is a stats counter.It is fast,free,and quick loading.Invisible tracking is available and no ads on your site.All the stats are in real time and super fast.It is not much animated as histats.com.They will provide pageviews,unique vistors,visitors activity,search engine wars,keyword analysis,and many more..

Learn how to hide,disable or remove the blogger navbar(navigation bar) from your blog.First,let us see what blogger navbar is:

blogger navbar

Blogger navbar allows users to easily navigate to other random blogs and it also has a feauture to search the blogs ,and mark any blog as spam.So,now you have a clear idea of what really a blogger navbar is.So, why so many people prefer to just remove the navbar inspite of the feautures it has like search,etc.Many people think that, it spoils the look of the blog,especially if your blog has differnet subtitle layout which looks too obvious to see for a visitor.Well, let me come to the actual point on how to disable or hide your blogger navbar.

Below is the step-by-step procedure on how to do it with photos to make it easy to understand.

1.Sign in to your blogger account and click the layout next to your blog name.

2.Next,click the edit html tab as shown in the below picture.

3.Add the below html code as specified in the below picture.

#navbar {

height: 0px;

visibility: hidden;

display: none;

}

4. Save the changes.

Now, you can see your blog without that navbar(this tip can only hides the navbar,it doesn't completely delete it).If you want the navbar to appear again,just remove that code and save the changes.If you have any doubts,regarding this post,don't hesitate to ask.You can ask your doubts via comments to this post.